One or two from Canterbury

Hello all. I was in Canterbury a couple of weeks ago and thought I would post some shots. For the most part the weather was pretty ropey so indoors was the order of the day... and mostly in the magnificent cathedral. All taken with the K5 at ISO3200 I think, with one or two lenses...

1. The gatehouse to the cathedral (DA 40mm)



2. A couple of views of what one local chap described as the 'best view' in the cathedral - looking straight up beneath the main tower (DA 40mm)



3. (DA 40mm)



4. Coo-ee! in the cloister (Sigma 10-20 I think)



5. Looking down the nave (10-17 Fisheye)



6. Halfway through the building (10-17 Fisheye)



7. Thomas a-Becket's candle (10-17 Fisheye)



8. Another look upwards (10-17 Fisheye)



9. Just behind the Marlowe Theatre I found this sculpture of a large face (called "Bulkhead" I think), which I was rather taken with, so here's one of that (DA 40mm):



10. and a last one, where my missus is getting in on the act... (DA 40mm)



Hope you like these; any C&C welcome as ever. As usual there are a bunch more on my flickr stream.

Cheers

I rather like those, very good technique and very interesting shots.

Really good images and the full flickr set is enjoyable viewing. The conversions are great, 2 is my pick the tones are sumptuous.

Excellent set Matt. I started to pick favourites but there were too many

What a great set !

As John says, all engaging...and for me lots to learn here on interesting ways to photograph interiors like this... but if I had to pick one it would be #3 - strong conversion and the angles work really well. Gotta love the DA 40

Thanks for the kind comments all I recommend a day in Canterbury if anyone is in that neck of the woods - I really enjoyed using the DA40 on this trip - it has become my favourite lens for now I think... (until next week at least:shock

Cheers

Wow, lovely set of images, love the post processing work you've done.

Gotta love that fisheye too.

Magnificent - are you available to teach me how to process my images like you do? Send me a PM if you're in the Sheffield area and have some spare time!

Cheers
David

Thank you Ali and David - much appreciated.

David - I would happily share processing hints but I don't think I'll be in the Sheffield area anytime soon. In the meantime I can offer few highlights if you'd like...

For all images I shoot RAW and then give them an initial adjustment in PSE8 - using the Adobe Camera Raw tools to start with (not normally anything too radical although I find this is the best tool for getting rid of unwanted colour casts etc by adjusting the WB) and then initially adjusting shadows/highlights, contrast (via a layer), levels (via a layer) and saturation (via a layer). I then normally despeckle and reduce noise and sharpen a little using unsharp mask.

If I then want a B/W image, there are three packages I tend to use (normally one per picture rather than all three!) - either (a) the 'convert to black and white' tool in PSE, and then play around with curves/levels and colour channels to get a pic I am happy with, or more often (b) use Silver Efex Pro or (c) DXO film pack.

Silver Efex Pro is fantastic as it enables a lot of tunes to be played on how the initial B/W image is created (high key/low key, under/over exposed etc.) and then film emulations can be applied along with colour filters and (my particular favourite) vignette and edge burning can be applied to varying degrees - playing around with those can be a bit of a voyage of discovery but great fun.

DXO Filmpack is basically a film emulator coupled with some adjustment tools, but it has a huge array of colour and B/W films to choose from, different grain effects, colour filters and tones. I find it very good for making B/W images with people in for some reason. With both packages I tend to then do some final adjustments back in PSE8 (a spot of levels and contrast/brightness normally - generally looking to make sure I have some proper black blacks and white whites according to the Histogram.

For the colour shots here inside the cathedral, having processed in PSE8 I thought the shots lacked something, so I used some of the digital filters available in Colour Efex Pro to create a slightly different look. I think I used bleach bypass, contrast adjustments, vignette and detail extractor tools to get these results (just playing around until I found a 'recipe' I was happy with).

I suspect that all of the filters available through Silver and Colour Efex can be achieved through PSE adjustments but with more hassle (. I have acquired various packages over the years... I think I originally downloaded all of the packages as trial versions for free, and then decided (as I liked them) to invest in a proper licence.

Hope that helps

Cheers

What an excellent set - very fresh approach and amusing too. Love the detail and the vignetting effect works so well.

As another has said - I started to pick favorites, then gave up.

Thanks Bob

Cheers